The present invention relates to an output unit for a continuous wrapping machine.
The present invention may be used to advantage in the tobacco industry, and in particular on machines for wrapping and/or overwrapping packets of cigarettes--hereinafter referred to generally as wrapping machines--to which specific reference is made in the following description purely by way of example.
Continuous machines for wrapping packets of cigarettes normally comprise a wrapping line defined by a number of conveyor wheels tangent to one another in cascade fashion, and each having a number of peripheral seats for receiving respective packets. The packets, which are substantially in the form of a rectangular parallelepipedon, are fed along the wrapping line, passing from one wheel to another at the point of tangency between the wheels, and are manipulated both as they are transferred from one wheel to another, and as they are fed forward by each wheel.
Continuous wrapping machines are known to feature conveyor wheels with seats for receiving the respective packets laid flat, i.e. with a large lateral surface facing outwards, and for feeding the packets in a direction crosswise to a small lateral surface.
Though particularly advantageous in the sense that each packet is transferred from the respective seat on one wheel to the respective seat on the next wheel along a relatively short path and therefore relatively quickly, the above seat arrangement poses problems at the output of the wrapping line, where the packets, still laid flat, take up a relatively large amount of space on the output conveyor. As this, in most cases, is a stabilizing conveyor on which the packets must be kept for a given minimum stabilizing time, the above seat arrangement requires the use of relatively long, fast stabilizing conveyors.